The present invention relates to a tape feeder which pitch-feeds electronic parts held on a carrier tape to supply them to a pick-up position of an electronic part mounting apparatus.
As a method of supplying electronic parts in an electronic part mounting apparatus, a method using a tape feeder has been known. In this method, a carrier tape holding electronic parts is pulled out from a supply reel, and it is pitch-fed in synchronization with mount timing of electronic parts, whereby the electronic parts are supplied to a pick-up position for a mount head.
Such the tape feeder includes a tape feed mechanism, and recently a motor drive type tape feeder in which each tape feeder itself has a motor as a tape feed drive source is used. By adoption of the motor drive type, it is possible to control freely a feed pitch and a stop position in tape feed by motor control, so that there is advantage that a tape feeder having good wide-use can be realized.
In order to downsize the electronic part mounting apparatus, a multi-type tape feeder is used, which supplies plural tapes by the same tape feeder for the purpose of making arrangement pitch of tape feeders small. However, in case that the above motor drive type is applied to this multi-type tape feeder, since the plural motors are arranged in parallel, a size in the width direction of the tape feeder becomes large, so that it is difficult to realize a compact tape feeder.